Why Rest Alone Will Not Heal a Sprained Ankle

Thousands of people from all walks of life twist and sprain their ankles every day. whether you tripped on a sidewalk or landed on someone else's foot in a basketball game, a sprained ankle is one of the most base injuries around. Of course, every person knows they typical advice: R.I.C.E. (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation). In other words, most people will propose you to just lay in bed as much as possible and ice your ankle until the swelling goes down and you can walk again. Fortunately, a new comprehension of the body reveals this is not the best way to heal such an injury. In order to understand why, you need to know a microscopic bit more about how the body works.

When you have an injury, the body immediately tries to protect that area to preclude additional injury. Inflammation is one of the body's best ways to protect the injured area from additional movement and harm. So, in the case of ankle sprain, you will find a lot of inflammation, which means you will barely be able to move your ankle at all as the joint swells up to a softball. And it will take many weeks if not months for the inflammation to gently decrease adequate for you to walk normally again. But, as the inflammation decreases, an additional one phenomenon will occur. Your body will yield scar tissue nearby the injury. Your body does this to help advance and protect the weakened joint from time to come injury. This is the body's natural response to injury if you just rest.

But, there are a estimate of problems with the natural medical process left to itself. One, it takes a very long time. Inflammation goes down very, very gently and does not effortlessly allow for the flow of fresh blood and nutrients into the injured area. It is also very hard to remove the waste from the cells in the injured area. So, although the inflammation protects the area from movement, it takes a great deal more time to heal the injury, because the ligaments and cells cannot get fresh blood and nutrients and also cannot remove waste efficiently. In other words, the inflammation blocks the free flow of wholesome blood into the area as well as blocking the free flow of waste products produced from the injury out of the body. In addition, the amelioration of scar tissue inhibits the movement of a joint, which means that in the future, your joint will be much less flexible and capable of strengthening itself.

In a nut shell, the body, if left to just rest, will heal itself as best it can, but will undoubtedly keep your ankle weak and inflexible which puts it at greater risk of injury in the future. So, here is how the body ordinarily heals itself if left on its own:

1) Inflammation response - to protect the area from additional injury which is very slow to fully heal and reduces the flow of blood and fresh nutrients into the area.

2) Produces scar tissue nearby the injury to help protect the injured area in the future, but also dramatically reduces flexibility and vigor in the joint.

Rehabilitation, on the other hand, still allows the body to rest most of the day, but also actively moves the joint to help dramatically reduce the inflammation and avoid the build up of scar tissue. That means that the ligaments will heal much faster and better, because they get fresh blood in and can move the waste out. Also, the movement will help reduce the adhesions advanced by scar tissue which will significantly advance your ankle joint and keep it flexible.

In fact, most people find that with proper rehabilitation, their ankles are far more flexible and strong then before they injured their ankles in the first place. Of course, this puts you at a much lower risk for injuring it again in the future. Remember, it is not working against the body, just helping the body to heal more efficiently. Joints that only rest and do not move get rusty and an injured joint, such as a sprained ankle, needs to continue to be moved, stretched and strengthened to preserve it's flexibility. For example, if you were to dislocate a finger, your physician will tell you to keep captivating it (one base exercise is to make a fist and then open it and spread your fingers out as wide as possible in a sink filled with warm water). They will account for to you that rehabilitating your finger is the key to insuring you sound its flexibility and vigor in the future. But, for some reason, when you twist or sprain an ankle, every person just says to rest. It is bizarre that people recognize that rehab is prominent for one joint but not another.

So, if you sprain an ankle, I strongly propose doing a good rehab program. I advanced a schedule that specifically works to heal your ankle within a week by significantly expanding the vigor and flexibility in the joint. It also dramatically reduces inflammation, scar tissue and the neuromuscular damage done by the injury. Thousands of others (including pro athletes) have quickly and effectively healed their ankle injuries with it and I welcome you to learn more about it.